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How I Pitch Potential SEO Clients

Thinking of hiring us to take care of your SEO? Depending on who you talk to here at MWI, myself or my partner Corey or in the future our VP Sales or another team member, you may get a slightly different pitch, but here’s how I pitch the potential clients I talk to.

Client: I’d like to get some SEO for my business.

Me: Great! Can you tell me a bit about your business and your products and services?

Client: Sure thing, we sell widgets.

Me: That’s great! Tell me, how much do you sell each widget for, and what’s your profit per widget?

Client: We sell about 200 per month right now, for $100 apiece, and our profit per widget is about $40.

Me: Perfect. We have a minimum monthly fee of $5,000 USD per month. In order for it to make sense for you to pay us $5,000 per month for SEO, we would need to be able to earn you a profit of at least that amount, just to break even on your investment with us, but what you really want is to make back 2-3 times that or more. Let’s say that for your $5,000/month investment, you need to earn an additional $15,000/month in profit, does that make sense?

Client: Of course.

Me: To make $15,000 in additional profit, with your per unit profit being $40, that means we need to help you sell an additional 375 units per month. You’re the expert on your industry, do you feel like if we do a good job on SEO, it’s reasonable that in the next 6 to 12 months we could get you to where you’re selling 575 units per month, including the amount of units you already sell on your own?

Client: Yes, there are tens of thousands of these widgets being sold every month. We’d love to be selling thousands of these each month, and I don’t see why that’s not possible.

Me: Great! As you know, SEO takes time to get going. The first 1-2 months mostly involve planning, strategy, and technical on-site SEO, so it’s unlikely you’ll see tangible results that quickly. You may start seeing results in the 3rd and 4th months, but it’s really in the 6-12 month range that the results start to take off. Is $5,000 a reasonable budget for you to invest while we’re working to get you up to 375 additional sales per month and beyond?

Client: Yes, we’re prepared to make that investment.

Me: Wonderful! Let me put together an official proposal for you, and if everything in it looks good to you then you can sign it and we can move forward immediately. I can have email that to you within two days.

Client: Sounds great! I’ll watch for your email.

Of course there are other factors in the SEO sales process. I’ve written a Forbes article 4 Tips For Hiring The Right SEO Firm which details some of what any potential client should look for when hiring an SEO firm. The above dialogue represents the initial email, phone call, or face to face meeting I might have with a client. It’s low pressure, focused on generating sales (or leads, where sales are difficult to track), and is all about finding mutual benefit in the client-agency relationship.

If you’ve ever been pitched by an SEO firm that did an awesome job, what did you appreciate about their pitch? How could we at MWI improve on the dialogue above? Let us know in the comments below.

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Hi! I'm Josh Steimle, and I started MWI from my apartment while a college student in 1999. I'm based in Shenzhen, China and responsible for MWI's overall strategy and marketing. I've written over 200 articles for publications like Forbes, Mashable, TechCrunch, and Time, and I'm the author of Chief Marketing Officers at Work. I love speaking to corporations and at marketing industry events. I was recently recognized by Entrepreneur magazine as one of 50 Online Marketing Influencers To Watch in 2016. Read more of what I'm writing on my blog.